To understand the explosive dance between two stars in a close orbit, researchers turned to a 3D model — and even 3D printed it to get a more intuitive view.

The double-star system V745 Sco is about 25,000 light-years from Earth, and consists of a big, aging red giant star and a small stellar core called a white dwarf. As they orbit each other, material from the red giant is pulled toward the white dwarf and falls onto its surface, eventually igniting bright nova explosions. In 2014, researchers spotted the system fading to 1/1000th of its brightness in optical light as an explosion died down. The blast was equivalent to about 10 million trillion hydrogen bombs, according to the new study's authors.

Researchers were able to analyze a bright nova explosion from the binary system V745 Sco in 2014 — the third time a dramatic brightening of the system had been observed, but the first time they could gather extensive data.

Analyzing the data, the astronomers saw something unexpected: Based on the X-rays flying out of the blast, it looked like most of the ejected material was headed in Earth's direction, rather than evenly outward, according to the statement.

Researchers from the Palermo Astronomical Observatory and University of Palermo, both in Italy, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts built a 3D model of the explosion to try to understand the blast.

That model suggested that a large disk of cool gas around the pair's equator, released as the white dwarf pulled on gas flowing from the red giant, helped shape the blast of material to concentrate upward and downward. The interaction also produced an expanding ring of hot, X-ray-emitting gas, according to the statement, but the X-rays emitted by material moving away from Earth were blocked by the material moving toward it — creating the illusion that all the material was moving forward.

The 2014 explosion from the system V745 Sco, visualized: The white dwarf and its red giant companion are visible, as well as the disk of cooler gas released from the red giant as the white dwarf pulled at it. A blast wave formed as the ejected material hit that disk of cooler gas.

The researchers also found that not that much mass was released compared to the total needed to trigger an explosion, which means the system can continue to create the explosions and accumulate material — eventually, if enough builds up, the white dwarf could undergo a large- enough explosion to be destroyed in a Type Ia supernova.

A 3D-printed version of the model offered a tactile view of the blast wave, seen in gray, and the ejected material, shown in yellow.